


clueless

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Daisy and her big crush on Coulson, F/M, Romance, that's it that's the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 15:11:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9241055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Written for the Johnson & Coulson exchange: Prompt =  "Coulson & Mack are sent on an Inhuman Welcome Wagon mission, Daisy tags along and watches from afar to see how SHIELD does things. Coulson talks to a recently-turned Inhuman kid and something clicks for Daisy."





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hamsterfactor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hamsterfactor/gifts).



**1.**

The humming of the Zephyr 1, which she feels in a different way to everyone else, in a more intimate way, it’s beginning to feel like home - more so than the Playground full of strange agent’s face and rules and regulations and inspirational posters and a Director of SHIELD that is nothing like _her_ Director of SHIELD.

She jumps at his presence, startled, and recoils a bit, as she normally does these last few days. He’s bound to notice, of course, _it’s Coulson_ , if he hasn’t already. He notices stuff, it’s what he does.

“You’ve been distracted since we came back from Lagos,” he says, looking worried. “I understand but if there’s something wrong-”

“I’m fine,” she says, smiling widely at him. 

He nods and waltzes away from her, giving her space, supposing that mission has shaken her a bit, like it shook him. It did, but that’s not the problem.

Daisy watches him walk out of the room, watches the curve of his back with this new just strangely familiar shiver-like feeling running through her.

 

**2.**

It starts a week earlier, actually.

Coulson and Mack are called in for a Welcome Wagon situation and the Director tells Daisy to tag along. She knows it’s all PR crap, Mace wants her to show her face whenever she can in non-violent missions, or for publicity. Daisy couldn’t care less about that crap but she jumps at the chance to work in helping Inhumans.

“How did she transform so late in the game?” she asks, once they’re in the Zephyr.

“It was impossible hard to recall every bottle of food suplement,” Mack explains. The rate of transformation is non-existent these days, but there are still odd cases from time to time. “Some of them might linger in a shelf for years. More, if people don’t pay attention to expiration dates.”

“It’s vitamins,” Daisy says. “Who pays attention to expiration dates on those?”

“I do,” Mack argues.

Daisy smiles. “Of course _you_ do.”

“We’re almost there,” Coulson comes by to tell them. He has a solemn expression on his face. Mack looks equally gloomy. They were doing this all those months she was out of SHIELD, helping people like Daisy. Well, Coulson and Mack were there when she first transitioned, and they helped her. Now they have the advantage of having dealt with it before.

The Nigerian government had signed the Accords and all around they were pretty cooperative. Daisy had read and memorized the new SHIELD rulebooks about Inhuman cases. Full of stupid rules Daisy can’t wait to break. There was some good advise, too, on the Welcome Wagon manual - informed no doubt (judging by Director Mace’s attitude towards him, both irritated and seeking his approval) by Coulson’s expertise.

“The priority is to get the kid to control her powers so she can take off the gloves,” he’s saying now, as they begin touching down.

“Yeah, it’s great that SHIELD technology is getting used that way,” Daisy huffs. Thinking, it’s my fault, really. The tech was initially developed by Jemma to help her get a hold of her powers. Talbot and his ATCU had demanded the specs after Hive’s possession of Daisy scared them into trying to find solutions against hostile Inhumans. Double her fault.

But Coulson’s discomfort at the idea, and Daisy’s heartache upon thinking about it, have a different cause: the technology was being used on a little girl of twelve years, and Inhuman who had transformed six months ago - while Daisy was out of SHIELD - and whose progress Coulson and Mack had been called in to monitor. Like James or Lincoln or Daisy herself this child had an explosive, destructive and hard to control power. Her touch could lower the temperature of any object until frozen. That includes people too.

“It’s the first time you meet her?” Daisy asks.

Coulson makes a complicated face. “We were called in when it happened. But they had her sedated. Mack and I never actually talked to her.”

“The Director told me to _just observe, don’t intervene, Agent Johnson_ ,” Daisy makes a pretty good impression of Director Mace’s speech, hoping to lighten the mood.

The lines on Coulson’s forehead deepen for a moment.

“I lead this mission,” he tells Daisy. “And you are the only Inhuman in the team. If you have to _intervene_ , it’s your call.”

Daisy makes her hand into a fist and then relaxes it and brushes her fingers across Coulson’s shoulder, letting him know she appreciates the support.

 

**3.**

The installations are modern, and the people there seemed compassionate. But even a best case scenario makes Daisy’s stomach churn.

The Inhuman is a short and chubby little girl named Essie. Mack is extremely gentle as he operates the monitoring gadgets, placing a control armband on the child to check her vitals while Coulson talks to her. He explains why they are here. He even introduces Daisy, who is only supposed to be _a fly on the wall_ in Mace’s cheerful words.

“She’s an Inhuman like you,” Coulson tells the girl and the girl, a blank fearful expression until now, lights up with some reluctant curiosity. Daisy smiles at her and nods. “And she’s a superhero, you know,” Coulson goes on.

Daisy feels warmth in her cheeks with that lie. She knows Coulson is just trying to cheer the girl up. She steps back and lets Coulson and Mack do their job. She doesn’t want to get too close, in any case. They have their system and it’s like being back as consultant, Daisy doesn’t feel quite there, doesn’t feel like she is part of the SHIELD machinery. She wants to be clear-eyed for this; she trusts Coulson and Mack, their intentions and their hearts. She doesn’t trust the Director’s agenda.

She looks around the pale blue, clean room. There’s a big mirror in one wall. A two-way mirror, she knows. Essie’s mother is looking from the other side. Coulson made sure she knew she could stop the process at any point, if she thought they were causing her daughter distress. That was on the new rulebook, actually. When dealing with underaged Inhuman the authority of SHIELD does not supercede the parents’. It’s a good rule - unless the parents suck. And Daisy knows far too much about the good odds of that happening. This time, though, the parent seemed to be accepting of her daughter’s nature and had been given enough time to realize Essie was not changing back.

For the first part of the interview the girl just nods and shakes her head, noiseless “yes” or “no” answers.

“Is it just you and your mom, Essie?” Coulson asks then.

The girl nods.

“Yeah? When I was your age it was just me and my mom, too. Make sure you treat her well, okay?”

The girl looks down on her own hand.

“I hurt her,” Daisy hears her say. It breaks her heart that those are the first words the girls says since they arrived.

Coulson throws a brief glance towards Daisy.

“Yes, Essie, I know. You hurt your mom. But it was an accident, you didn’t want to hurt her. And it was just a bit. She’s okay now, and it didn’t even hurt that much, she told me. It’s fine. I heard you also hurt yourself.”

“Yeah…”

“But you’re okay now, aren’t you?”

The girl nods again.

“That’s why my friend Mack is checking all these gadgets, to make sure you don’t hurt yourself again,” he explains.

As Coulson talks to the kid an odd sensation, some kind of heat, spreads across Daisy’s nape. She’s never felt it before - well, sometimes, when she uses her powers, she feels this whole connection between every part of her body. But she has never felt it regarding _another person_.

His gentle eyes, on the level with the girl’s. His understanding smile.

This weird synesthetic moment where Daisy swears she can physically see Coulson’s kindness and compassion, his heart glowing, filling the whole room with warm light.

Daisy feels woozy, for a second. Something inside is realigning.

She just stands there, hoping no one notices. She probably should stop staring at Coulson, but suddenly her eyes have a mind of her own (that’s horrible, her mind, the one, is doing terrible things with the language, because all her brain cells are busy with an awful joyful feeling at the bottom of her stomach).

She feels her heart in her throat. No, it’s still in her chest. Just beating all over her body.

“We’re finished here,” Mack tells them with a nod.

Coulson turns to the girl.

“Hey, that wasn’t that bad, was it?”

Essie rubs her arm a bit after Mack gently takes off the monitoring equipment. She shakes her head at Coulson, bravely, assuring that no, it wasn’t that bad.

Coulson smiles, still crouched to keep at eye level with the girl.

“Okay, Essie, we are going to go now. It was a pleasure meeting you,” he tells her. The girl smiles a bit - kids love being talked to formally, Daisy knows that. Coulson goes on. “But before I go I need you to do something for me.”

“What?” Essie asks.

“I want you to remember this: What you have is not a curse or an illness, Essie. It makes you special,” Coulson tells the little girl. “Only you in the whole world has this gift. It makes you who you are. And it’s wonderful. Remember that.”

The girl bravely nods, wanting to believe Coulson.

The girl doesn’t cry at all, not once during the whole thing.

Daisy remembers going back to the plane in a haze, no longer feeling herself, yet feeling more like herself than an hour ago. 

“Have you dealt with many kids who have transformed?” she asks when they are on the air, feeling like everything she says sounds weird, like dubbed over, but needing to talk to him.

“This is the only one,” Coulson says. He sounds thankful. He looks tired. He looks like he’s been through something that has sucked all the energy out of him. Daisy wants to wrap her arms around him. She wants to take his hands in hers, and touch his face.

 

**4.**

At first she is in a lot of denial, and she knows it (which kind of defeats the purpose? is it still denial if you know it?).

At first she thinks it’s some kind of longing for something she never had - that it’s just that it would have been great if she had had someone like Coulson in her childhood. But that wasn’t it. She doesn’t want someone like Coulson in her past. He wants him in her present.

 _Wow, Daisy. Really?_ She shakes her head at the phrasing.

Feeling awkward every time she sees him at first she stays away.

Of course every time she tries to avoid him she ends up bumping right back into him - not _literally_ , that would be a problem, in her current state.

It’s not that she doesn’t recognize the feeling, even if it has never been quite this intense.

That flash of heat at the back of her neck when she sees Coulson or thinks about Coulson. When she remembers how he was with that Inhuman kid. A flash that went through her whole body and - yes, she doesn’t mean to be crude, but it goes right between her legs. It’s not the first time she has felt this kind of attraction; she remembers meeting the legendary hacker Miles Lydon for the first time, only to discover he was a tall, gorgeous guy and basically a cowboy fantasy made flesh. But Coulson is different, she can’t be lusting after Coulson. He’s always been different - there’s the rest of the world, and then there’s Coulson, a separate category in himself.

It’s not just that she has felt nothing like this (shades of it, sure - when she was fifteen), it’s that she has never felt it for someone like him.

“What are you watching?”

She’s on the couch in the common area, and she didn’t hear Coulson come in, or she would have made up some excuse to walk out of the room. She looks at the screen, trying to divinate.

“Uh… a cooking show, I think?”

“You like this stuff or are you just hungry?” he asks, sitting by her side.

To be honest, she was up in her own head and didn’t notice what was on; thinking about how hot Coulson is, probably, because apparently she has gone crazy, finally, after so much crap, after the GH drugs and Terrigenesis and Hive, it all had finally affected her judgement - and at the same time she feels sick at herself for thinking that, because fancying Coulson is not a disease or an altered state, he’s awesome and funny and kind, anyone would fancy him, why is she acting like this is some terrible disaster, it’s kind of offensive and she’s disappointed at herself. Badly done, Daisy. Or badly thought, in this case.

But the truth is this _is_ some kind of terrible disaster, but not because Coulson is a bad option. Because this means she’ll probably lose him.

“What? I can be interested in cooking shows, can’t I?” she snarls back, like a freak.

Coulson just gently smiles at her.

“Sorry, of course you can.”

“No, sorry, I’m sorry,” she says. She does feel bad but on the other hand he doesn’t have to sit that close to her. Does he always sit so close to her when they are one the couch together? Have they ever been on the couch together before? She doesn’t know anymore.

“Are you okay?” he asks. Understandably. She’s acting like she’s not okay.

“I’m fine.”

She can feel his worry, this close. Unfortunately, she can also smell his shampoo.

 

**5.**

Does she want to have sex with Coulson? That is the question. Not that she has much say in the matter because… well, he would never. She knows him. He’s not… Daisy can’t be in denial about that, he doesn’t feel that way about her and could never. He would probably consider the thought disturbing. (so yeah, he doesn’t need to _ever_ know)

It’s not his fault. He’s done nothing wrong. It’s just Daisy’s bad habit of wanting more than she can have. She sighs (she does that lately, she thinks it’s beginning to annoy Mack, and she’s such a cliché). She is so lucky to have a friend and, sometimes more importantly, an ally like Coulson. She couldn’t let that be enough, no. Greedy Daisy.

The question remains: does she want to have sex with Coulson? She’s seen his body, so there’s that. She’s seen him use it in training and on the field. She might joke from time to time about his age but truth is most of the time she completely forgets he’s supposed to be over fifty. And hey, it’s not like guys her age are that great to have sex with. In her somewhat limited experience guys her age are pretty crap. Plus Coulson is a passionate man, that must make a difference. Daisy bets he is able to make any woman (or man, she doesn’t want to assume, but she’s seen the way Coulson looks at men) feel like the only person in the whole world.

He has often made Daisy feel like the only person in the whole world.

She can imagine (and _only imagine_ because god, life is not that great) what it would feel like if the romantic or sexual issue is added to how amazing Coulson already makes her feel. It would be too much, probably, like something she’d never felt. Plus he likes good food and good clothes, that definitely means something - something good. Being pampered and lavished (oh she thinks Coulson fits more with the word “lavish”) by Coulson… that must feel like the stuff of dreams. And his hands - 

But of course she is getting ahead of herself.

What she felt back in Lagos, that lightning bolt of a feeling as she watched Coulson talk to the Inhuman girl, it wasn’t about jumping into bed with him.

Daisy thinks she might want to date Phil Coulson.

 

**6.**

Avoiding Coulson was never the solution, obviously.

Also it’s not really practical. Plus Daisy doesn’t really want to avoid him, the warm spot at the back of her neck is telling her to spend _more_ time with him, not less.

Trying to date him without him noticing seems to be the only course of action. For a while, that phrase makes sense in Daisy’s mind.

They spend most of their times in missions together, anyway. Makes it easier ( _to stalk him, you freak_ says a voice in her head).

And she’s mastered the art of “casually” and “accidentally” ending up having breakfast with him. It goes smooth in the plane, because she doesn’t have to train or even wake up so early. Coulson - what if she starts calling him “Phil” in her mind? - seems happy enough to be spending the extra time with her. He’s always acted like hanging out with Daisy was so great, one of his favorite things. Looking back Daisy wonders why she didn’t get these feelings for him earlier.

(she knows why; far too scary - this is how she would ruin things, she would have reasoned, and she would have talked herself out it, find a bulletproof way to deny it or pretend it’s something else; so what does it mean that she is going through this now? that, despite earlier objections about this, she is no longer scared Coulson is going to walk away from her life, no longer scared she is going to lose him?)

It’s just easy getting him to have his meals with her, since they have pretty much the same hours. And if they’re out on the field, she can normally convince him to try some local haunt, sometimes with Mack, sometimes the two of them alone. Most of her Coulson-problem plans are food-related, she admits. She’d try something more elaborate but they don’t have much of a personal life, after all. It’s not like she can casually invite him to the movies. She does mention interesting stuff on tv at the end of the day, and sometimes he’d stay with her and watch. 

(one time he fell asleep when they were watched something;

Daisy didn’t fall asleep)

She feels like when she was a teenager and had a crush on someone at school and spent her days simultaneously trying to hide the fact that she had a crush and trying to get that person’s attention. But that was a million years ago; her relationships are not like that, it’s either them pursuing her, or things just tend to happen on their own. She’s never been exactly contemplative. 

But like a stupid teenager, she finds herself staring at Coulson at the oddest moments. Like now, sitting on the kitchen with a bowl of cereals she is really not eating (more like she keeps drowning the rice puffs and making them soggy, the spoon never reaching her mouth), while she can see Coulson on the other room, focused on a video call that is not going too well, judging by the way his frown burrows. It does that a lot, doesn’t it? She liked that about Coulson from the beginning, he seemed to worry easily, the lines of his forehead often curling and deepening. Daisy always felt that him worrying meant he cared. She liked people who cared, she was drawn to Coulson from the first moment she met him because he seemed to care.

“Is he talking to the Director?” Mack’s voice shakes her out of her daydreaming, as it often does these days.

Mack startles her, but she doesn’t jump like with Coulson. It must me more than a physical thing because Mack is way hotter than Coulson. She smiles up at him, thinking, yeah and self-preservation, YoYo would skewer me.

“I think so, judging by his face,” Daisy replies. “I think we’re turning back.”

Mack groans, runs his hand over his face and goes to make a call. He has reasons to want to be on base these days but hey, no rest for the wicked. The wicked, in this case, again going by Coulson’s face (and that particular glint of disgust he gets in his eyes whenever someone mentions the group), are their old friends the Watchdogs.

“So?” she asks Coulson when he comes to the kitchen. She sounds weird to herself. She can’t manage to sound natural with him anymore.

“So it’s a good thing this puppy has a couple of industrial washing machines,” he says, dropping to one of the chairs, and looking down on his shirt as if to make a point. Daisy likes how he doesn’t bother to hide his frustration or anger in front her. Well, not specifically her, he used to hide those things from everything. Like they somehow made him less of a capable boss.

He is not anyone’s boss anymore. 

Daisy thinks that’s a good change. The others don’t seem to agree with that. She knows they think he should have stayed on as Director. She gets it, Mace is not ideal. But Daisy appreciates the meaning behind the gesture, she appreciates that Coulson felt he had to do it, regardless of the consequences. And he seems happier this way.

“You wanted me to be Director,” Daisy says all of the sudden.

He looks caught for a moment, then the lines of his mouth relax.

“I did,” he says.

“Okay, just checking that really happen.” _Checking I didn’t misheard or misunderstood or dreamed the whole thing up._

“I wish you were Director right now,” he tells her. “I could probably convince you to send us some backup for this mission.”

There’s a dancing edge in his words. Did that sound flirty? Daisy can’t trust herself anymore. Coulson used to say flirty things to her. Not like unprofessional things, he was being gross or anything (he’s the least gross person in that sense, and Daisy knows a lot about gross, threatening dudes who tell you things that make your skin crawl when you hear them - what’s the opposite of your skin crawling? the opposite must be the safe, easy feeling she got when Coulson talked to her in those early days, even when he flirted). He was just being funny. 

He’s smiling at her, clearly satisfied with his comment about her being Director - it feels so weird to think about that, her being Coulson’s boss.

Daisy doesn’t know how to reply. She is no good at flirting. Never was. A disaster really. but she swears she flirted with Coulson on those early days, too. She flirted and teased him and talked about his sex life and called him “charm school” and how the hell did she manage to do that without her head exploding.

So she says nothing.

She finally puts that spoonful of cereal in her mouth.

They’re disgusting.

 

**7.**

He was right, though, in the end. They did need backup on this mission.

“It feels weird being in a regular hospital,” Coulson says.

It feels weird for Daisy too.Normal, civilian hospitals are something she spent a long time trying to avoid. She had one rule during all those months on her own: _don’t get knocked out, don’t pass out, or someone might call an ambulance and you’re screwed._ It’s hard to shake that feeling off.

“The perks of SHIELD being in the open again,” she says. “I guess. And the Director said it’d be good for publicity. An agent using regular facilities, help the public see us as approachable. His words.”

Daisy tries to bite her tongue. She knows Coulson would be more comfortable in the base, in SHIELD’s facilities at least. It’s just some cracked ribs and a concussions that needs to be monitored overnight, it’s not like they were in any hurry to get him to the hospital. They could have moved him back home already. One of Mace’s schemes, again.

“I don’t exactly want publicity on this.” He purses his lips in an ugly grimace.

Daisy looks away, then back at the scratches on Coulson’s temple.

Thinking: yeah, it’d be pretty bad if the public hears the details of this attack.

Thinking: an Inhuman did this.

Someone _like her_ did this.

Someone on the side of the Watchdogs, fighting against the very people who want to protect him.

Fighting against people like her.

And Coulson.

“Not all of us are so great, uh?” she says, coming closer to his bed and smiling apologetically at him. She feels guilty, like she is somehow responsible. Like every action of every Inhuman out there falls under her jurisdiction. Coulson has only fought and fought to protect Inhumans. He shouldn’t try so hard. Not to the point where he ends up like this.

Coulson sits up a bit.

“Not all humans are great either,” he points out. “Maybe we’re the ones who should be wearing the locator wristbands.”

Daisy gives him a frustrated smle. He really is impossible.

Because it’s past cafeteria hours she goes out and grabs some stuff from the vending machine. They even have dodgy looking chicken sandwiches in it these days. Dodgy-looking sandwiches turn to be the most delicious, in her experience. She tells Coulson this when she presents him with his and he agrees. It’s almost comfortable, for a moment, until Daisy gets that shiver-like feeling at the base of her skull again.

She switches the tv on and finds some basketball for her and Coulson to watch together. He shares his vending machine food with her.

It’s a date only in her mind, but hey, it totally counts.

“I let you get hurt,” she says, quietly. The sports commentator is louder but Coulson hears her anyway. “I’m sorry. I should have been there.”

“It’s not your job to protect me.”

Daisy tilts her body to one side. “That’s debatable.”

“Daisy…”

She tosses a chocolate bar at his lap, trying and failing to seem casual and easygoing.

“Shut up and eat your candy.”

 

**8.**

She asks Mack for a favor. 

“You know you’ve been acting really weird lately,” he comments, looking amused. “Weird-er.”

“You promised Coulson you’d do it,” she says. “What does it matter if I get you to hurry up?”

He shakes his head, but gets right onto it.

She already apologized profusely for the extra work, and promised to make it up to him. But she was running out of creative excuses to spend time with Coulson. She needed a new one. Mack said something about the Zephyr 1 inventory coming up and Daisy almost regretted the whole thing.

When she’s sure everyone else is in their room she goes to find Coulson.

“Mack says he fixed Lola’s flight system already,” she tells him, knocking at the door of his bunk - because when he’s not sleeping in the Z-1 he has a small, humble bunk under the Director’s office.

“Yeah, a couple of weeks ago.”

Daisy wiggles her eyebrows. “You never taught me how to make her fly.”

He looks surprised.

“You want to go now?”

“It’s Friday night, Coulson,” she says, so tempted to call him Phil, she really wants to call him Phil, but she can’t seem to find the place to let it slip naturally. “We should live a little.”

“Okay, give me five minutes.”

They find a field nearby perfect for flight practice - Daisy feels tempted to practice her own brand of flying, but deep down she knows it’s just an impulse to show off. It’s nice, though. She has never felt like using her powers to impress anyone before, but she liked the idea of Coulson being impressed by her. Coulson who idolized Captain America and Thor. She would love if he could idolize her a bit. She knows she not… it’s not like she is a superhero or anything. But it’d be nice to have Coulson think she is.

“This is harder than I thought,” she says, struggling to get the hang of the thruster system - she would never tell Coulson, but it’s a bit rudimentary.

Coulson is a patient instructor. Which is weird, because he’s not really that much of a patient person.

“That’s fine, at least we are not plummeting to our deaths after…”

“After Grant Ward shot at us, yeah,” she adds.

That was some flying, though. More like falling, but Lola had taken them to safety like a champ, and afterwards they had a hotel room with pool and Coulson bought her chocolate and looked at her like she was so great. Funny, she had forgotten all about that last part, the shared sweet, the way Coulson stared at her while they didn’t talk. Was she making it up? Maybe she was remembering how she wants.

But her and Coulson and Lola? It makes sense. Even if Coulson doesn’t understand the significance, it’s nice out here with the two of them.

“Now that I’ve mastered this,” she says, once she has mastered this and put them down gently on the ground, “maybe we can go grab something to eat. Or go see a movie.”

“Sounds good.”

“Like - you know - going out.”

Coulson narrows his eyes at her. He has absolutely no idea what she is talking about.

“Like a date?” he offers, careful as if the word burned. Then Daisy watches as some kind of realization washes over him. “You’ve been trying to date me.”

All the meals together, the extra conversation. The _staring_. It’s shocking he is only realizing now.

Daisy follows her first instinct, the instinct she couldn’t get rid of even if she wanted.

“I’m so so-”

“ _Why_?” he asks, cutting her off. Not in a bad way, he just looks confused.

“What? No one could possibly want to date you? You never struck me as insecure.”

He smiles a bit. Maybe they can still be friends after this.

“No, it’s not that. Why specifically you? You and me.”

She looks away, embarrassed about the whole thing.

“When we went to Lagos, when I saw you with that Inhuman girl… I don’t know. Things started to get confusing. I started getting these… feelings.”

“Feelings?”

“Like feelings-feelings.”

“For me?” he asks, like he needs the clarification.

She nods. “For you.”

She wonders what he’s going to say. He seems to think it for a bit, those lines in his forehead, those damned lines, so full of worry and so cute. Though, this is probably not the moment for that, Daisy reasons. She is probably about to blow the best friendship of her life (part of her doesn’t believe that, hasn’t really believed that, because it’s Coulson, and he would never react that way or punish her for her feelings - he might spend the next few decades acting very awkward, but he would never withdraw his affection).

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks her, his voice lowered, confused. Like that should be the first thing she should have done. Just tell him.

“Because I knew you were going to say that you cared for me very much, but not in that way. I wanted to figure out what I was really feeling before getting rejected.”

“And you were sure you were going to be rejected.”

“Well, yeah. I mean - I’m not an idiot.”

Coulson looks at her like she is a bit of an idiot, just a bit, and presses his mouth against hers.

It’s everything she has been fantasizing and yet so much better. It’s everything she loves about Coulson - how careful and passionate he is and how there’s no contradiction there, how quiet and intense, and how good he makes her feel just by existing - but it’s also so new. That she knows him so well, yet these are parts of him (his mouth, his tongue, the way he _uses_ his tongue, his hand on her shoulder, fingers clasping around it, his body leaning awkwardly to kiss her) she’s experiencing for the first time. And the same is true for him; Daisy feels all the air knocked out of her thinking Coulson is now smelling her scent, tasting her taste, feeling the skin on the curve of her neck under his fingertips for the first time ever. 

When she was in high school none of the crushes she had returned her feelings. Most didn’t know she existed. She’s never wanted someone this bad and got him. That is new too.

As if on cue Coulson chooses that moment to pull away and break the kiss, or break the kiss and then terrifyingly pull away.

“Why did you stop…?” she whispers. She half-hopes he hasn’t heard the need in her voice, the embarrassing new need.

“Daisy…” he says, still so close to her mouth. It feels so strange, yet so natural, and she guesses that’s what these things should have felt all along, and she had been just pushing things before, forcing herself and others into a watered down version of what it should have been like. “You are so amazing, you are everything…” He sighs. God, why does he stop now? “Daisy, it might not be real.”

“What?”

Coulson gives her a little sad smile, like he’s expecting to have _his heart_ broken instead.

“You saw me be kind to an Inhuman child. The way things are in the world, I can understand why that made you believe that you felt something romantic for me.”

“That’s a good theory…” she says, calculating the minimum number of words necessary to get him to kiss her again, to touch her again. “But if that was all there was… then why was the best kiss of my whole life?”

Coulson looks touched and surprised and she thinks it’s not like him to be insecure. But she’s been feeling so many things that are not like her at all, these past few weeks, these past few years since he came into her life (or she came into his, she’s not sure which way it is).

He touches her cheek, then her hair, the ends of her hair, fingertips greedy and careful like she is so precious. She didn’t know anyone could make her feel like that. Daisy finally finds a word for that feeling she gets on the back of her neck when she’s around him.

“I love you,” she tells him.

Then she flushes, overcome with shame - shame because she knew herself so little, because she thought she’d never have this, and because it’s still hard, so hard, to open herself to someone like this.

Coulson cups her face in both his hands. She notices how different the feeling of prosthetic skin is, and it makes Daisy want to cry, because he deserves so much, so much better than what he’s got in life.

“Are you sure?” he asks. “Because you could be-”

“Phil,” she cuts him off. His face lights up at hearing his first name on her lips. So it was this easy, uh? It makes Daisy wants to laugh, how clueless they’ve both have been. She repeats his name, just for the joy of it. “Phil… Phil… shut up and kiss me.”


End file.
